


Pieces

by uhnonnymouse



Series: demus be wildin [2]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicidal Thoughts, M/M, Mild Gore, Self-Harm, Sympathetic Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Sympathetic Deceit Sanders, gore but its not due to violence, references to the creativity split, remus dissociates a lot, this isnt super dark but its depressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22085569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uhnonnymouse/pseuds/uhnonnymouse
Summary: Deceit knows Remus doesn’t choose to be spending more and more time in bed, the pain so great sometimes he can barely talk. He knows that Remus can’t help it when he is reduced to only a vessel for unwelcome thoughts, that his greatest fear is to be regarded only as Thomas’ trash bin and nothing more._Remus gets sick, or something synonymous._(Creativity was meant to carry this burden, but only half of you is doing the job.)
Relationships: Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders & Deceit Sanders, Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders/Deceit Sanders
Series: demus be wildin [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1593724
Comments: 15
Kudos: 176





	Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> So I've been writing this steadily over the time of several months. It is, at its core, is just an exercise in writing Remus. It gets really fucking weird tho so hang tight.
> 
> Specific trigger warning: there is an explicit description of self-harm using fire

(Sometimes, you’re splitting again.

Sometimes you’re being torn apart at the seams, blood oozing from every pore before you explode, a thousand contradicting shards of bone and clumps of flesh pushing away from each other desperately.

Broken apart violently, snap and squelch of brittle bone, clots of blood raise in welts to the surface, breaking the skin and bursting in hot blisters. Muscle unwinds into thin, infinite threads, body deflating as you are unraveled from the inside, excess blood pouring from your finger and toe nails, until you’re only skin and bones.

A thousand different yous that are no longer you, a thousand different thoughts, a thousand different voices. They split apart and you beg to be put back together, scraping the dried blood from the walls to smear it back onto your skin, lick it from your palms. You swallow organs and drink bone marrow, you jam your fingernail back where they belong, patch muscle back to bone and skin back to muscle. You piece yourself back together, wrangle the parts into something cohesive, even if just enough to identify even a part of what you were before.

So hard you try to mangle yourself back together, but it’s no use. You’ll never be you again.

After all, you’re missing half the pieces.)

*

Remus is raw, unfiltered thought. Remus is an accumulation of ideas, twisted concepts and fantasies, the waste the others have forced out. Have a thought you don't like? Send it Remus' way.

(Sometimes you feel pieces of yourself in the others before it’s even really a part of you. Sometimes you find yourself in the weirdest of places, the nookest of crannies, like pieces of gum beneath tables and desks, and it all gets stuck in you, in your teeth, in your intestines.)

There is never not a moment he isn’t aware of the function of his existence..

*

_…spiders crawling up my throat, I’m suffocating, please help me…_

_…if I bleed they’ll notice, they’ll care, red is such a loud color…_

_…shut up shut up shut up I’ll kill you, I’ll fucking kill you…_

_…I love you, I love you so much, I’d do anything…_

_…I miss him so much, I’m dying without him, I’m so sorry…_

_…they’re right, their better off without me, I only hurt him…_

  
  


*

Remus knows when there are people in his room. All the sides think differently, such distinct thoughts and patterns. When stray thoughts get caught up in his consciousness, he can usually derive from where they came. And when someone's in his room, it’s like planes intercepting, crashing into thousands of flaming pieces, going down in one firey meld of metal, the people trapped inside. 

Not that anybody but Deceit visits his room anyways.

He knows the moment Deceit enters his room because suddenly Remus is drenched in freezing (water, and you’re drowning, frostbite gnawing off your limbs, breaking you apart into bite-sized snacks for the unknown creatures that lurk the depth of the ocean, creatures that brush against the last of your nerves) bitterness. Remus jumps up from the bed where he had been dozing (it’s been so loud lately, so overwhelming, all you can stand to do is lay there and try not to vomit from the sheer amount of it, trying not to bash your head in or fill every orifice with water so you can drown it out, it hurts so much), running down the hallway to meet Deceit at the stairs.

“Dee?” He asks aloud, as if he had to make sure. 

Deceit looks up at him, and he is beautiful.

(Deceit is screaming. He is screaming, a shrill and irrational sound that rattles your skull, sending chills up and down your spine, something dense in your stomach. Deceit is throat going sore, mouth running dry, vocal cords straining against muscle, snapping under the pressure. Deceit is jumping from the top of a building, knowing full well you’ll hit the ground in a _splat_ that rattles the world. Deceit is a man beating his father to death, raw emotion driven to the edge. Deceit is beautiful things on fire, Deceit is Nazi flesh melting, Deceit is the best fuck you could imagine, Deceit is the suffocating vaccum of space, Deceit, Deceit, Deceit.

You’ve tried to paint Deceit, you’ve tried to capture him on your canvas, but it’s like wrangling with a wild wolf, claws and teeth and raw strength making it impossible. You always end up with sickly yellows and greens arranged into a still scene of a hurricane tearing apart houses on the edge of the ocean, peoples' faces eternally twisted into horrible screams for mercy as their homes and families are torn from them viciously.

It’s nothing compared to him. Nothing you make will ever compare to him.)

Remus gasps as he runs to Deceit, throwing his arms around him in as tender an embrace he can manage. As soon as Remus touches him he is open to a factory, gears churning up in that big head of his, producing thought after conscious thought, forever running in overdrive.

The mechanisms in Deceit’s head is heavy and overheated. Remus wonders if that’s why his body is so cold, his head sucking up all the heat to oberate. The contrast is exhilarating.

Deceit’s thoughts are (a tether, a heavy chain that keeps your bloated head from floating away like a big, veiny hot-air balloon. He’s the nails driven through your palms, he’s the cross you’ve been left to rot on, and he keeps you spread out beneath his hands, keeps you from ascending to a realm that needs not your body or your soul) usually sour, bitter, dry. And sometimes they’re terribly hot as well, spicy in that uncomfortable way that clears the sinuses and lingers on Remus’ tongue and in his stomach far to long.

Remus, half out of relief and half out of curiosity, kisses Deceit before he even gets the chance to speak.

His lips are open with surprise, letting Remus easily shove his tongue into his mouth, taking the time to explore every inch of it. Not that he hasn’t already.

Deceit kisses back, but only for a moment, pushing Remus back gentle. He immediately lets, locking eyes with a dazed Deceit.

“So I take it you didn’t miss me.”

Remus, never one to hold back, gives Deceit another kiss, just a chaste peck. “Why don’t you come visit more? I hate not knowing when you’ll show up.”

Deceit sighs, running a hand through Remus’ hair. “Preparations, darling. I have lots of work that needs getting down, work the others can’t know about. Not all of us have the luxury of sitting around all day.”

Remus can tell the moment the lie leaves Deceit’s lips that he regrets it. Deceit _knows_ Remus doesn’t choose to be spending more and more time in bed, the pain so great sometimes he can barely talk. He knows that Remus can’t help it when he is reduced to only a vessel for unwelcome thoughts, that his greatest fear is to be regarded only as Thomas’ trash bin and nothing more.

Deceit is suddenly panicked, whipping tears from Remus’ eyes and oh, he’s crying, Remus is crying, when did he start crying?

Remus collapses into Deceit, wailing into his shoulder, and he lets him, Deceit holds him close and lets him cry and mumble nonsense, lets him release all that been building up and up relentlessly in his head.

*

_…run them over run them over run them over you fucking coward…_

_…I’m unnatural, my face isn’t even human, I’d look normal if I just…_

_…I’m dangerous, I’m so sorry, please don’t hate me, please don’t leave me…_

_…I fucking hate myself, nobody sees me, nobody will notice unless I…_

_…what if they died right now, what they got in an accident, what if I’ll never see them again…_

_…there’s knives in the drawers, all it takes it one swipe, one swipe…_

*

(Creativity was meant to carry this burden, but only half of you is doing the job.)

*

Remus’ corner of Thomas’ mind was dark.

Remus had to focus very, very hard to bring any light to the place, and even then it’s dull and limited. Unless, of course, it’s condensed enough.

The lighter is small, and it’s flame is smaller, but Remus can feel it’s potential in each spark.

The flame is so relaxing. Watching things being slowly eaten by the light is tantalizing, overtaken by heat until it is nothing but ash. It all burns the same; the fire has no bias.

He brings the flame over his fingertip, watching the skin burn and boil, then fall off. He burns right to the bone, until that’s being eaten away at too. He continues until he’s burned all the way through, only stopping once his fingernail falls to the ground in the goopy puddle of flesh and ash he’s created.

Remus has already moved onto the next one when the lighter his swiped from his hand. He looks up to see Deceit hissing at him.

“Don’t do that.”

“Why?”

“You’re just doing it to be weird.”

Remus frowns, trying to trace the lie in that.

(The fire was distracting, it ate your flesh, and that was distracting, Deceit knew it was distracting, they eat at you, you’re dying and you know it, he knows it, why won’t he let you go? Why does he keep you trapped here?)

“I didn’t hear you come in.” He can’t hear Deceit at all, Remus realizes.

Deceit looks crushed. He looks scared and lost, and Remus has no idea why. He can’t hear him.

Deceit sits down in front of him, and pulls him into a hug. He’s the one crying his time.

“I know it hurts.” (He doesn’t, he doesn’t understand and he knows it.) “But it’ll pass, this’ll pass. Remember when Virgil would get bad?”

“We thought it would never end.” Remus did remember. When Virgil was still around (things were better, Deceit was happier and you had someone who understand what it was like to hear the others, to be overwhelmed by their simply being. And most of all, you miss his strength. Virgil is so, so strong. You aren’t, not with just the half of you), he’d get so bad they wouldn’t see him for days, weeks at a time. They’d worry and worry, and every time they got so scared, but it turned out okay, everytime. Everytime.

“This’ll end,” Deceit promised. “This’ll end.”

*

_...I don’t think I’d miss him, if he died, I’m a monster…_

_…theres pills in the cabinet, I could go to sleep…_

_…this’ll never end, I’m going to stay like this forever…_

_…I’m going to strangle him, leave bruises everywhere…_

_…let me go, please let me go…_

_I know you can hear me, Remus._

*

Remus is painting.

Or, he’s trying too. He’s been starring at the blank canvas for so long, the paint on his palette has dried. He couldn’t even make a stroke if he wanted to, his joints locked in place.

Art block was a bitch.

He _literally_ jumped out of his skin as Deceit appeared beside him.

“Painting?” Deceit asked as Remus snapped his skin back into place.

“Art block.” Remus demonstrated by popping his knuckles with a tearable crunching sound. One of his fingers broke, and he tried to fix it as Deceit conjured a wooden stool. He sat himself down behind the easel.

“Paint me.”

Remus stared at him for a very long time. Deceit stared back, placid.

*

(It’s a terrible painting.

You realize half way through that you aren’t even painting Deceit. You’ve been staring at him, but your fingers have betrayed you, creating instead the vague definitions of a woman with her brains spread out on the earth. Dogs have picked her head apart, yet it is not disorderly, instead her brain was uncoiled with anatomical precision.

Desperate, you try to save it. You root the woman’s brains into the earth, into sewer systems full of diseased people who grasp at the tendrils of her mind. The dogs transform from heedful and patient to angry and frustrated.

You realize a third of the way through that you liked the painting better before you tried to “fix” it. That maybe Deceit hadn’t really wanted you to paint him after all.

You seduce Deceit into bringing the both of you to his room.

The painting remains unfinished.)

*

_Remus,_

_can you keep a secret?_

_(I know you can’t. Rhetorical question.)_

_I am not nearly as brave as I seem. It may come as a surprise to you, but I am scared of many things._

_I am scared of the dark._

_To an extent, I am scared of spiders._

_I fear the ocean, and immobility, and rejection._

_But it is you, Remus._

_It is you I fear the most._

*

Remus woke one morning, and he couldn’t hear anyone.

It was dissociating. Like the strings that were holding him together were suddenly yanked out all that once. The glue washed away overnight.

“Dee?” He called out into his empty bedroom. “Double-D? Cobra Lie?”

Remus fell out of bed, to the door, down the hall. He was about to launch himself down the stairs, but he was pulled back.

Deceit hugged him close, one cold hand running up and down his back, the other tucked away in his hair. He wasn’t wearing his gloves.

Remus hadn’t realized how much he’d been sweating, how little he’d been breathing.

They spent the day like that, close, cuddling naked on in bed. Deceit coiled around him so tightly, as though he alone was holding Remus together, keeping him from splitting apart into a thousand different pieces.

Few words were exchanged.

*

“What the _fuck_ are you doing?”

Remus has heard Deceit appear behind him, but had been to focused on his sculpture. Now he turns his head a whole 180 with a crrr _aaack_ and smiles wide at him.

“ _Booger sculpting.”_ Remus rotates on his feet to face Deceit fulling. He holds up his hands, slimy green blobs flying off them as he wiggles his fingers. “Wanna taste?” 

Deceit nearly gags. Remus shrugs, “more for me,” and eyes Deceit as he sensually licks a big-ass boogie off his middle finger and swallows.

“Why.”

“Well, Thomas saw a kid picking their nose today…”

Remus went off an a tangent, turning back to his sculpture as he talked and Deceit made a cup of tea and sat himself on the couch (as far away as possible) to listen.

Like most of his creative endeavors, Remus didn’t have much of a plan. He simple let his head go where it pleases, letting every racing thought passing through his fingertips.

At one point he stepped back to look at it, it was resembling a cheap halloween decoration, some sort of janky skeleton sitting on a gravestone. Another time he stepped back, it had more of a “man half way through hitting the ground head-first” look.

“ _So_ glad your feeling like yourself again.” Deceit scowls as Remus wraps up his story. “Totally missed all of this.”

Remus flicks a booger at him.

He hates it when Deceit pretends to lie.

*

_I don’t think you’ll even understand what I did for you._

_Which is fine. Whatever._

_… I only hope you’d do the same for me._

*

(Sometimes, when you look in the mirror, you see only pieces.

A Frankenstein's monster of a side. Thousands of parts mangled together, the original thought left buried beneath the noise. Left to make do with what others have thrown away.

You are broken. Half of you has been stolen from you, and if you focus hard enough you can feel it. So close yet so far away, right within reach, but you can never take it back. And you yearn. You yearn terribly to be whole again.

But every so often, when you look in the mirror, instead you see Remus. Just Remus.

And being Remus isn’t so bad.)

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is super vague and weird and has some unexplained elements so feel free to gather your own meaning from it. I can try to explain stuff if you ask but otherwise I'm not wasting brainpower.
> 
> Thanks for reading my garbage, leave a comment if you're feeling spiffy
> 
> also, if you ever want to be in a real remus mood, look up "paintings of sick people"


End file.
